Life of a semi feral equestrian attempting to learn dressage with her Arabians. Humor, science, and doing things in a roundabout way.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

We Came, We Saw: Horse Show Update Part 1

The past few days have been something short of slightly insane.

Thursday, I went into work early for a meeting, had a couple more meetings throughout the day, and then desperately tried to catch up on my actual job.

I then had class at 4:30, which consisted of taking my phlebotomy final. I did fine with the classmate I had to draw (as we practiced and drew on each other!) and off I went towards home, where I picked up a friend and went to the barn.

I figured since I had a horse show that weekend, I should probably ride my horse at least once before going to the show....

Friday was spent taking the written phlebotomy final online, packing up random horse related objects in the house & barn, bathing one horse, getting too hot to bathe & clip the other horse, putting horses in the trailer, and heading to the show grounds.

I did manage to get both horses in my very small two horse trailer, which was entertaining. Plus, I managed to get both horses there (and back ;) ) safely. I am slowly getting to be a little less of a chicken about driving the truck and trailer, but there is still so much worry about it!! But for only my second time hauling, I think I did fine.

Pretty much the expression on my face, most of Friday

We arrived safely at the show grounds.

Both the SFM and SFF were worked undersaddle and the SFM did pretty well. It took a few minutes to convince her the back gate was not going to eat her. Thankfully we had a super friend (and another horse) that we could use to wander back and forth past the gate until it was a non-issue. I think it's usually easier to show the horse by example (another horse, or even someone on the ground) that it's OK to hang out in a scary place, rather than skittering back and forth a dozen times if the horse is upset and cannot focus on its job. But we conquered the gate, put the horses away, and began to wait for my friend's horses to arrive as she was doing two trips from her farm to the show grounds.

Another friend and I ended up noticing one of their horses not looking like her bright, chipper self. Crap. Friend had gone back to her farm for the second load of horses and so we stepped up and ended up medicating and hand walking this pretty little mare until she seemed to get over her mild bout of colic.